RSS Leaders Are Wrong About Gadkari And Narendra Modi

To lead an organization which is nationalistic / religious / charitable in nature, a person has to be capable, accountable and humble while taking pride in the organization he is heading. Humility is important because in such an organization, a person needs to set aside his personal ambitions.


However, if the organization is a state or a country and the leader is a politician, then the rules change. Of course, the person needs to be extremely capable, accountable and honest but should he also be humble? A person who thinks that he can lead a state or a country cannot be a humble man. They have to have extreme confidence bordering on hubris and are likely to have a streak of megalomania. In fact you almost want these qualities in a politician. An extremely humble man, Lal Bahadur Shastri was no match for vultures around him.


Now an honest, capable, accountable and supremely confident / arrogant man can accommodate others who have similar ideology and interests as long as their ambitions do not clash. However, such a person cannot be realistically expected to submit to the diktats of others. Such a person may work well within a party with a strong ideology or some other strong binding factor. However, after establishing their “frontrunner” status, they would almost demand others to rally behind them. A perfect example is the way a presidential nominee is selected in the US where after an acrimonious primary; the entire party comes to support the eventual nominee.


We all know that the RSS elders almost get to decide who becomes what in the BJP. In that way, the BJP does act like they are the political wing of the RSS. Those elders are leaders in an organization which demands that everyone in it submit to the organization and sacrifice their personal ambitions if need be. While that may be a good idea for grass roots level politics, it is a bad idea for a national politician. As discussed earlier, a candidate for PM will have a strong personality that cannot be controlled by the RSS (otherwise you will have a disaster like Manmohan Singh).


If the RSS elders want to stay involved and more importantly, stay relevant then they should ready to accept a person who is honest, capable and strong leader who works largely within the party ideology and keeps the nation above all. The RSS elders CANNOT afford to keep such a person out because he does not submit to their diktats. In other words they need to keep their own egos in check for the benefit of the country. Time after time we have seen that being an old time RSS loyalist is no guarantee of a good leader. Bangaru Laxman (graft), Sanjay Joshi (sex scandal), Shankersinh Vaghela (traitor to the BJP) and now, Nitin Gadkari (extremely incompetent) are RSS stalwarts who have nothing but shame and failure to the BJP.


Even as I write this, there are plans to rewrite the BJP rules to enable a second Gadkari term. Gadkari is like BJP’s Rahul Gandhi with some differences. Gadkari is not as good looking. Unlike Gadkari, Rahul does not faint in the hot Sun. Gadkari is also much more like to make public gaffes because of his loud mouth. Of course Rahul has the backing of the Congress royal family and Gadkari has the backing of the RSS elders. In any organization where capability was valued over loyalty to the decision makers, Gadkari would have been discarded like sour milk. Yet in BJP, he is poised for a second term, thanks to the RSS elders. Just as he did in UP, he will bungle up BJP’s chances in the next national elections and we will have the RSS elders to thank for that. I hope that those elders will have the courage and integrity to accept the blame.


It is a national tragedy that the BJP has a leader like Narendra Modi who has proven himself over and over and is now widely recognized the world over as a capable leader. However, he does not submit to the whims of the RSS, VHP and ambitious but incapable BJP leaders and therefore he will remain in Gujarat. Just like the RSS leaders, Modi has a big ego (and justifiably so) but he remains the best bet for India. Ironically, Modi will be brought down not by the leftists and liberals but his own party people. Such is our luck.